Escape to the House of Mummies Part II
"Escape to the House of Mummies Part II" is an episode of the animated television series The Venture Bros., the fourth episode of the second season. Parodying old adventure serials, the episode is intentionally convoluted, full of non sequiturs and open ended digressions, with key plot elements purposefully omitted. There is no real Part I. Storyline Previously on "The Venture Bros." ... the team found themselves involved in a convoluted time travel epic involving an Egyptian cult of Osiris, and historical figures such as Dr. Sigmund Freud and Caligula, with plenty of various adventure and action clichés in abundance. After the recap of the fictional episode "Escape to the House of Mummies Part I," we join the team who are now trapped in a room deep within a pyramid, apparently in the present day. The only possible exit is through the head of a jackal sculpture sticking out of the wall, but even Dean's slender shoulders are too broad for him to squeeze through. Exasperated, Dr. Venture heaps derision on his sons' shortcomings as boy adventurers, and goes to scoot through himself. However, he is stopped when spikes emerge from the walls, which start to close in. The team is out of ideas, until Hank suggests they call Dr. Orpheus for help, and Brock backs him up. Reluctantly, a fuming Dr. Venture makes the call, and reaches Orpheus as he's raking leaves in the yard (with magic). Venture explains the situation, and Orpheus urges Dean to imagine Triana naked and kissing him and even using tongue. Dean has no problem doing so, and this allows Orpheus to locate them, whereupon he uses magic to shut off the death trap. Dr. Venture then crawls through the jackal's head to get help. Dr. Venture flies the X-1 back to the Venture Compound (damaging the statue out front when he hurriedly lands), and rummages through his laboratory for the equipment he'll need to rescue his sons and Brock. Orpheus finds him, and they get into another debate on the relative merits of science vs. magic. They decide to settle it with a bet -- whoever can shrink themselves the most, wins. They agree to meet back in the lab the next day to hold their contest. As he's leaving, Orpheus reminds Venture he sold Jonas Sr.'s shrink ray to Pete White and Master Billy Quizboy at the tag sale. This unsettles Venture. Meanwhile, the action shifts back to Brock and the boys, with the progress of their adventure left intentionally dubious and nonsensical: At some point, the boys have adopted a mummy, and Dean's head is inexplicably detached from his shoulders but still alive. Without explanation, Brock, Dean, and Hank end up in the 1800s, where Brock puts Edgar Allan Poe in a headlock, apparently for no other reason than because he is amused by the shape of Poe's head. Again without explanation, Poe ends up travelling back to the present day with Hank, Dean, and Brock. In need of his father's shrink ray, Dr. Venture breaks into White's and Quizboy's mobile home and trashes the place. But the owners come home and catch him in the act, and after they get over their anger at him, it is revealed that Pete White has disassembled the shrink ray because a) he couldn't get it to work, and therefore b) figured there must be a treasure map inside. The ray is now a collection of loose parts in a small paper bag. Meanwhile, Triana goes into her room to find Orpheus standing in front of the closet, from which unearthly light pours out. Stunned and upset, Triana chews him out for not telling her that her closet actually was a portal to Hell (a necropolis, as Orpheus phrases it), and explains that her fear of the closet is why she always wears the same outfit. Orpheus just thought it was a phase, and that teenagers did that normally, like Archie and Jughead. Seeing that she isn't going to just let this slide, Orpheus casts a sleep spell on her and erases her memory. "Meanwhile," if that has any meaning, Brock and the boys have used the time machine to go back in time ... to the previous morning. As a result, they (along with Edgar Allan Poe and Sigmund Freud) witness their own capture by the Osiris cult. In the otherworldly necropolis beyond Triana's closet, Dr. Orpheus approaches the throne of his master. Sitting on the throne however, is a three-headed dog which snarls at Orpheus, until Dr. O. zaps it in the nose with a lightning bolt. The dog (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) then bitterly complains about that to Orpheus in his master's voice, revealing itself to be Orpheus's teacher in animal form. They begin a long discussion about why Orpheus is so uptight and friendless, while the master sorceror simultaneously licks his own crotch with one of his heads. Back at the compound, Venture, White and Quizboy have become distracted from fixing the shrink ray by a personality quiz, which reveals some humiliating and twisted "guilty pleasures" in Quizboy's answers. They get around to trying to fix the device, and after testing it out on H.E.L.P.eR. and reducing him to a few inches high, they single out Quizboy as their human test subject. It doesn't work so well on living things however, and they alternately shrink and expand different parts of Quizboy's body at a time. Brock, the boys, and their time-lost companions have apparently teamed up with an earlier version of Brock and are planning an assault on the Osiris cult, assisted by Caligula (who wants to have sex with the boys), Poe, and Freud. Orpheus's conversation with his teacher has wound down to the point where they are both lying on the ground, looking up at the stars, pondering how insignificant it makes them feel. With a few more words of encouragement, Orpheus's teacher urges him to go back out of the closet and win the contest against Venture. Venture and the others have come to the conclusion that repairing the shrink ray is hopeless. Venture acknowledges that he will never live up to his father, and can't even repair something Jonas Sr. built. Quizboy however, pulls out an old "Rusty Venture" lunchbox that he bought off of eBay. The front depicts the young Thaddeus, in his boyhood adventurer days, riding a pterodactyl. Venture reflects that he might not be a great adult super scientist, but he was a darn good boy adventurer, and Quizboy and White agree, saying he was an inspiration to many. Orpheus walks up and concedes. He can make himself no smaller than he already feels, so he defaults to Venture, who eventually reveals that he did no better. They decide to go hang out instead ... when suddenly Venture and Orpheus realize they forgot something. Indeed, Venture forgot to turn off the lights in the lab, and as he goes to flip the switch, he steps on the miniaturized H.E.L.P.eR. After the credits is a teaser for the (supposedly) upcoming episode "Escape to the House of Mummies Part III": somewhere/when, Hank is shivering in an arctic wind, begging Brock to kill him. Brock turns to his other self, and tells him to cut open the body so they can stuff Hank inside and save him from hypothermia. The other Brock takes his knife and slices open the carcass of Poe, commenting, "And I thought they smelled bad ... on the outside!" Quotes *'Dr. Venture' (in regards to Dean on the 'perfect man's' back, riding him like a steed): Dean, stop riding the 'perfect man'. Brock has to kill him now. *'Brock': Hank, get off those spikes. It's not a ride. *'Dr. Venture': Dean, what happened to your body? Hank: Yeah, Clarissa, explain it all. *'Brock': I gotta admit I always wanted to get Edgar Allan Poe in a headlock, that thing is like a pumpkin! Trivia *Team Venture meets up with the following people with use of the time machine: Sigmund Freud, Caligula, and Edgar Allan Poe. *The title and opening bit not only serve as an introduction to the episode, but a mockery on various multi-part episodes seen in television series and other forms of serial fiction by referring to a non-existent part one. Speculation prior to the episode's airing was rampant as to how the episode had been titled 'part II'. * The opening bit is the first time in the show's run in which it has not been letterboxed. *In what appears to be an running gag involving frogmen, several of the Egyptian cult members are shown wearing scuba equipment. (This may be a tribute to Jonny Quest.) *We now have a possible explanation for how Triana has not shown any sort of amazement or concern over the boys being cloned back to life in "Powerless in the Face of Death", if Dr. Orpheus is not above wiping her mind of certain problems. Her repeated appearances in the same clothes are also explained. *A comment is made about Pete White being William S. Burroughs while he tries out the shrink ray. William S. Burroughs famously killed his wife when he shot her in the face while trying to knock a glass off her head by shooting it. *The ending credit for World Leaders Entertainment depicts a caricature of John F. Kennedy proclaiming, "that's good chowdah." This is a reference to the show's first-season ending credit, when WLE was known as Noodlesoup Productions: a cartoon boy lisped "that's good soup!" *At one point, Hank says to Dean: "Yeah Clarissa, explain it all." Clarissa Explains It All was a show that aired on Nickelodeon in the early 1990s. *The scene in which Brock delivers an urgent speech outlining the assault on the cult is a parody of the end of the original Assault on Precinct 13. *Master Billy Quizboy mocks Pete White's bad aim with the shrink ray by saying "He holds the gun like a guy who plays Riven." Riven is a computer puzzle game part of the ''Myst'' series that was seen as an alternative to first-person shooters. Goofs *When Triana confronts her father about the portal to the necropolis in her closet, she say she's been scared of that closet her entire life. However, she and Orpheus only moved to the Venture compound within the last couple of years. This is, of course, assuming that Dr. Orpheus does not somehow magically transport or recreate the layout of his previous home whenever he moves into another building. **In addition, Triana was seen in "Assassinanny 911" (the episode just prior to this one) wearing a Hello Kitty-esque shirt instead of her normal Jolly Roger shirt. Escape to the House of Mummies Part II